English, Department of

 

Date of this Version

2010

Document Type

Article

Citation

The George Eliot Review 41 (2010)

Comments

Published by The George Eliot Review Online https://GeorgeEliotReview.org

Abstract

Rereading Middlemarch and Romola recently, 1 was struck by some unrecorded musical and literary parallels, none of them substantial enough (or indeed sufficiently interconnected) to be woven into an integrated article, but having, 1 hope, enough intrinsic interest to warrant my presenting them here as so many Casaubonic 'leavings' that might or might not be incorporated into future work on the author.

A Schubertian Moment in Middlemarch

George Eliot's enthusiasm for the Lieder of Schubert is attested by a letter written in October, 1859 - 'Schubert's songs, 1 especially delight in' (Letters, Ill: 178) - and our knowledge of that fact allows a partially concealed allusion to surface in Middlemarch. The 'sound track' for the meeting of Lydgate and Casaubon shortly before his death comprises 'the cawing of the rooks, which to the accustomed ear is a lullaby, or that last solemn lullaby, a dirge' (Ch. 42, 459) - an idea picked up and developed at the point where the clergyman is forced to contemplate his mortality as an immediate rather than a theoretical fact:

When the commonplace 'We must all die' transforms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness 'I must die - and soon', then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first. (461- 62)

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